Thing For You
I’ve got a thing for you.
A very big thing for you.
And I know it must be right,
Cos I feel it most at night
When I’m tucked in bed and thinking of you.
It’s so immense that I
Cannot fool any passer-by.
All the people that I meet
When I see them on the street
Say behind my back “There goes a lucky guy.”
It’s bigger than the both of us, it’s like the Eiffel Tower,
Standing proud and reaching to the sun.
People come and stare and as they gaze into the air
They say “Could I buy a plaster cast for fun?”
Although it’s hard, I know
That I could never let it go.
If you only got a sight
Of this anagram of night
Then together I’m sure we could make it grow.
I didn’t know for ages if you’d seen this thing of mine.
I kept it out of sight when you walked by.
The just the other week when you kissed me on the cheek
It bust right out and smacked you in the eye.
Now I’ve found out it’s true
You’ve got a thing for me too.
My thing’s come into its own
Now your thing’s made its presence known,
Now there’s only one thing left for us to do –
That’s take both our things and put them in a zoo.
1984
PS
There was this woman singing some song on TV. She kept banging on about having some unspecified ‘thing’ for someone else. It was completely ambiguous as to whether she was referring to something figurative and elevated, like an unquenchable passion or a profoundly spiritual, even maybe devotional, longing, or whether the thing in question was simply her fanny. It was awful, the way 98% of all rock lyrics are, arch and over-explicit at the same time, so I thought it was high time someone showed them the folly of their ways. Favourite line: “If you only got a sight / Of this anagram of night”.
I had a sort of melody worked out for it – can’t quite remember now what key it was in – but when the talented cast of actor-musicians of the Playwrights Company revue Hair of the Dog took it up in 1985, they were able to concoct a bright and breezy cabaret number-style setting which gave it a new lease of life. I love musicians. You can’t understand a word they’re saying when they talk shop amongst themselves, but they are all, without exception, creatures of mystery and brilliance.